This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Note: archive at right.

The ongoing relationship between the Brooklyn Museum and the city's real estate high-flyers is under fire, as artists and anti-gentrification activists are protesting the museum's willingness to rent space to the Sixth Annual Brooklyn Real Estate Summit, an industry event.

The panels and networking opportunities Nov. 17 aim at new sources of profit--and, as the protesters point out, foster gentrification and displacement. (I covered the summit last year for City Limits, noting it was not the place for some of the "dicey discussions" inspired by Brooklyn's boom.)

We feel that this event is using the very culture we create and support to endorse profit-driven investment.The mission of the Brooklyn Museum is to “act as a bridge between the rich artistic heritage of world cultures … to serve its diverse public as a dynamic, innovative, and welcoming center for learning through the visual arts.” Yet the Real Estate Summit states it will teach attendees “how to create value in places like Crown Heights, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Downtown Brooklyn, where it seems values are already maxed out.” As artists, critics, and writers, we cannot let this happen without speaking up and joining all the residents of Brooklyn who oppose the Summit.The African-American community of Crown Heights, which is the Museum's home, [AYR: well, next door to Prospect Heights] is in crisis, suffering daily displacements and tenant harassment. A mile or two away from the Museum, in Gowanus, over 300 artists just lost their studios in one building alone. Both of these examples are direct results of the tactics of the very people who are being welcomed by the Museum at this upcoming Summit.

They have asked the museum to change its rental policies, cancel the rental gig (not likely), convene an affordable housing and affordable workspace Summit (the Queens Museum has done, actually), put a rep from an organization dedicated to affordable space on the museum's board, and require that attendees at the summit make real commitments to truly affordable space."

In response, the museum's new director, Anne Pasternak--who inherited the museum's practice of renting to such events--responded, saying they asked conference organizers to invite artists and organizers to speak, promised to host a separate forum on affordable issues, and will examine policies for hosting events.

The offer to let a single artist speak at the summit, according to a report in the Times, was rejected by protesters.

Art & real estate

Pasternak's response, though seemingly sincere, likely doesn't change a fundamental dynamic, in which organizations like the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Brooklyn Historical Society (which also host real estate confabs) raise money from rentals and also rely on real estate industry wealth for philanthropic support.

After all, a major player in such real estate summits is Ofer Cohen, a member of the Brooklyn Museum's Board of Advisors, and president of TerraCRG. The Treasurer of the museum's Board of Trustees is David Berliner, the Chief Operating Officer of Forest City Ratner.

Also, despite the frustration and fury expressed by the protesters, art and commerce have a long history. As sociologist Jerome Krase commented on the Times article, "the greatest irony in this matter is that the museum has always been a positive value for local residential real estate values. in other words, it can't help but attract the more affluent."

In 2008, the museum provoked a protest by honoring Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner at a gala. Ratner's Barclays Center, led by art maven Berliner, has generated good publicity thanks to prudent deployment of quality art, such as the sculpture Ona. And Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park similarly generated publicity with the mural fest Pacific Park Arts, covering a giant construction fence.

The Brooklyn Museum's Pasternak, in her former role leading the estimable Creative Time, in 2014 produced the enormously successful Kara Walker project, A Subtlety, at the Domino Sugar site in Williamsburg, stating that they were "delighted that in the process we are providing the opportunity for the public to see this historic building for what may be last time."

It was, on many levels, a provocative and successful piece, yet at the same time, as Bucky Turco observed, took a pass on the implications of the giant New Domino real estate project it was distracting from.

The Eric Adams response

One wild card regarding the November 17 summit is the participation of Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, known for his "Build Baby Build" enthusiasm and his gush for Bruce Ratner. He has another side, too.

That was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, another nonprofit deeply intersecting with real estate, whose board was long chaired by Ratner."

“Bed-Stuy used to belong to people,” Adams said, in Katherine Clarke's report. “So did Brownsville and Harlem. Do you know how it painful it is to have the property you grew up next door to – and your mother told you to buy but you didn’t – to have someone else come in and buy it for $1 million?”

That's just a tad selective, because there's a difference between clearly unscrupulous tactics--deed fraud, forcing out tenants through withholding of services--and the process of the market, which public officials like Adams are supposed to shape through wise public policy.

Also, of course, some of those property owners have been longstanding owners making a profit. Also, as Clarke noted, Adams has collected significant contributions from the real estate industry.

As Clarke reported, Nikolai Fedak of the industry-boosting blog YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard), warned that “Change is a reality they’ll have to accept whether they like it or not.”

Art world coverage

See coverage in Hyperallergic, which also cited the open letter from artist and organizer Quinter, who cited rent pressures on herself and her neighbors, and also wrote:

Note coverage in ArtNet News, where Ben Davis analyzed the agenda, including “Mixed Use Strategies for Retaining Brooklynites."

Reading over the title, I briefly thought it was some kind of fleeting, tokenistic gesture at social conscience. Like a human, I thought “retaining Brooklynites" might mean preserving the fabric of existing Brooklyn communities.As it turns out, it concentrates on how to keep wealthy shoppers in the borough rather than going to Manhattan to satisfy their desire for boutique goods and services.

Davis also pointed out that the term "artists" often serves as "an unexamined code for college-educated, creative-class types, disproportionately white and disproportionately from middle-class backgrounds," though artists already live in neighborhoods to which "arists" move.

Davis writes:

In a way, the Brooklyn Real Estate Summit does us a favor. It puts a face on something—“gentrification"—that gets talked about in a too-abstract way, as if it were some natural process. Gentrification is planned, and here you have its planners, set to gather in the museum's Great Hall and plot “The Next Stage in Brooklyn's Development." Literally.

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hi norman. great commentary and thanks for noting my nty comment. my freind judith n. desena and i are writing a book, brooklyn revisited', revisiting the nabes we studied and were active in the 70's ; she greenpoint/williamsburg and me crown heights/prospect lefferts gardens... i'm sure to quote from this in the chapter 'from out to in' best, jerry krase

While that's part of the lawsuit, more prominent are claims of racial discrimination and retaliation, with black employees claiming repeated abuse by white supervisors, preferential treatment toward Hispanic colleagues, and retaliation in response to complaints.

Two individual supervisors, for example, are charged with referring to black employees as “black motherfucker,” “dumb black bitch,” “black monkey,” “piece of shit” and “nigger.”

Two have referred to an employee blind in one eye as “cyclops,” and “the one-eyed guy,” and an employee with a nose disorder as “the nose guy.”

There's been no official response yet though arena spokesman Barry Baum told the Daily News they, but take “allegations of this kind very seriously” and have "a zero tolerance policy for…

To supporters of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, it's a long-awaited plan for long-overlooked land. "The Atlantic Yards area has been available for any developer in America for over 100 years,” declared Borough President Marty Markowitz at a 5/26/05 City Council hearing.

Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, mused on 11/15/05 to WNYC's Brian Lehrer, “Isn’t it interesting that these railyards have sat for decades and decades and decades, and no one has done a thing about them.” Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, in a 12/19/04 New York Times article ("In a War of Words, One Has the Power to Wound") described the railyards as "an empty scar dividing the community."

But why exactly has the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard never been developed? Do public officials have some responsibility?

The bi-monthly Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Community Update meeting June 14, held at 55 Hanson Place, addressed multiple issues, including delays in the project, a new detente with project neighbors,concerns about traffic congestion, upcoming sewer work and demolitions, and an explanation of how high winds caused debris to fly off the under-construction 38 Sixth Avenue building. I'll have more coverage.
Security issues came up several times at the meeting.
Wayne Bailey, a resident who regularly takes photos and videos (that I often use) of construction/operations issues that impact residents, asked representatives of Tishman Construction if the security guard at the sites they're building works for them.
After Tishman Senior VP Eric Reid said yes, Bailey asked why a guard told him not to shoot video of the site, even though he was on a public street.

"I will address it with principals for that security firm," Reid said.
Forest City Ratner executive Ashley Cotton, the …

This graphic, posted in November 2017, is post-dated to stay at the top of the blog. It will be updated as announced configurations change and buildings launch. Note the unbuilt B1 and the proposed shift in bulk to the unbuilt Site 5.

The August 2014 tentative configurations proposed by developer Greenland Forest City Partners will change. The project is already well behind that tentative timetable.

At right is a photo of a poster spotted in Hasidic Williamsburg right. Clearly there's an event scheduled at the Barclays Center aimed at the Haredi Jewish community (strict Orthodox Jews who reject secular culture), but the lack of English text makes it cryptic.

The website Matzav.com explains, Protest Against Israeli Draft of Bnei Yeshiva Rescheduled for Barclays Center:
A large asifa to protest the drafting of bnei yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel into the Israeli army that had been set to take place this month will instead be held on Sunday, 17 Sivan/June 11, at the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn, NY.
So attendees at a big gathering will protest an apparent change of policy that will make it much more difficult for traditional Orthodox Jewish students--both Hasidic (who follow a rebbe) and non-Hasidic (who don't)--to get deferments from the draft. Comments on the Yeshiva World website explain some of the debate.

First mentioned in April, the Atlantic Yards project in Atlanta is moving ahead--and has the potential to nudge Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn further down in Google searches.

According to a 5/30/17 press release, Hines and Invesco Real Estate Announce T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards:
Hines, the international real estate firm, and Invesco Real Estate, a global real estate investment manager, today announced a joint venture on behalf of one of Invesco Real Estate’s institutional clients to develop two progressive office projects in Atlanta totalling 700,000 square feet. T3 West Midtown will be a 200,000-square-foot heavy timber office development and Atlantic Yards will consist of 500,000 square feet of progressive office space in two buildings. Both projects are located on sites within Atlantic Station in the flourishing Midtown submarket.
Hines will work with Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture (HPA) as the design architect for both T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards. DLR Group will be t…

Real Estate Weekly, reporting on trends in Chinese investment in New York City, on 11/18/15 quoted Jim Costello, a senior vice president at research firm Real Capital Analytics:
“They’re typically building high-end condos, build it and sell it. Capital return is in a few years. That’s something that is ingrained in the companies that have been coming here because that’s how they’ve grown in the last 35 years. It’s always been a development game for them. So they’re just repeating their business model here,” he said.
When I read that last November, I didn't think it necessarily applied to Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, now 70% owned (outside of the Barclays Center and B2 modular apartment tower), by the Greenland Group, owned significantly by the Shanghai government.
A majority of the buildings will be rentals, some 100% market, some 100% affordable, and several--the last several built--are supposed to be 50% market/50% subsidized. (See tentative timetable below.)Selling development …